Aircraft incidents continue to threaten aviation safety during takeoff, approach, and ground operations. With increasing air traffic and busier than ever airports, managing terminal area traffic both in the air and on the ground safely and efficiently is highly important. Landing, takeoff, and taxiway clearances are typically issued by air traffic control (ATC) via a voice channel in conjunction with airport signs, runway lights, and taxiway lightings and markings. There are several autonomous situational awareness system available today, however due to lack of information, human error, lack of intuitive display, lots of head down time which may lead to hazardous condition in real time.
The most common cause of incidents in aviation is often associated with human errors, or lack of information at the right place. A considerable portion of those incidents can be ascribed to a pilot's involvement in an assortment of simultaneous high workload tasks. With the growth in aviation traffic, one may estimate that these incidents will increase. Pilots often miss the longer ATC messages or pick up the wrong data, for example, a required altitude or heading, for the messages.
In some instances, ATC may issue a conditional clearance to an aircraft. A conditional clearance is a clearance issued by an air traffic controller that does not become effective until a specified condition has been satisfied. Conditional clearance instructions issued by ATC are used to authorize an aircraft to proceed under the particular conditions specified by the air traffic controller. Conditional clearances add efficiency to the control of airspace, as they reduce the total number of voice communications required. Once the condition is met, the corresponding the clearance instruction will be applied to the aircraft. In many cases, a conditional clearance is given in the following order and includes:
1. Identification;
2. The condition;
3. The clearance; and
4. Brief reiteration of the condition.
ATC typically requires that a conditional clearance be read back in full and in the same sequence as given, plus a brief reiteration of the condition. For example, a typical conditional clearance may be stated as follows: “Aircraft X, after passing altitude 8000 feet, fly heading 120 degrees.”
Electronic instrumentation displays continue to advance in sophistication, achieving increasingly higher levels of information density and, consequently, presenting a greater amount of visual information to be perceived and understood by the operator, e.g., the pilot. It is important that visual displays provide a proper cognitive mapping between what the operator is trying to achieve and the information available to accomplish the task. Data driven charts (DDC) have a powerful ability to integrate chart information with aircraft position and flight management system (FMS) procedural routing. This is a very crisp and concise way of presenting information. However, integration of accurate ATC instructions with DDC, particularly conditional clearances, and other information displays such as moving maps and electronic charts, is currently lacking in the art.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for improved aircraft display methods to further increase aircrew situational awareness when given a conditional clearance. These display methods should provide a visual representation of the conditional clearance that accounts for human factors in processing the conditional clearance. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the disclosure will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the disclosure.